Alternative group trip planning queries in spatial databases

Trip Planning Queries are considered as one of the popular services offered by Location-Based Services. We propose a new query type called an Alternative Group Trip Planning Query (AGTPQ) which is an extended version of Sequenced Group Trip Planning Queries (SGTPQs). Given a set of users’ source locations and destination locations and a sequence of Categories of Interest (COIs) that the users want to visit, an AGTPQ generates a new COI sequence order using one of the proposed techniques and finds an optimal trip starting from the source locations, passing through the new sequenced COI order and ending at the destination locations. We propose three approaches: Permutation Strategy on Sequenced Group Trip Planning Queries (PSGTPQs), Greedy Strategy on Sequenced Group Trip Planning Queries (GSGTPQs) and Random Strategy on Sequenced Group Trip Planning Queries (RSGTPQs). We compare the results of our proposed strategies with the PGNE strategy through experimental evaluation